British Journal of Canadian Studies: Along the Shore Review

Book review excerpt:

“One image lingers from those presented by M. Jane Fairburn’s eclectic and fascinating history of Toronto’s waterfront communities: a wooden sailing boat, part of the city’s industrial heritage, being publicly ‘blown up and burned’ by the owners of Sunnyside Amusement park in 1934 (p. 365). This seems striking as a clear example of what Fairburn depicts as Toronto’s awkward relationship with its own history. The functioning boat, the Lyman M. Davis, was purchased having been surpassed in use-value by steamers, for the entertainment value imagined in definitively consigning it to history. This is characterised as a moment of remembering and as enacting a wilful amnesia. It is therefore a tribute to Fairburn’s work that this moment is ably recontextualised in the troubled evolution of four key areas of Toronto’s waterfront geographies.”